by Ken Follett
‘You’d never know what a stink there was afterwards,’ said Billy.
‘The BBC doesn’t report stinks,’ said Lloyd. ‘They like to sound reassuring.’
Both Billy and Lloyd were members of the Labour Party’s National Executive – Lloyd as the representative of the party’s youth section. After he had come back from Spain he had managed to gain readmission to Cambridge University, and while finishing his studies he had toured the country addressing Labour Party groups, telling people how the elected Spanish government had been betrayed by Britain’s Fascist-friendly government. It had done no good – Franco’s anti-democracy rebels had won anyway – but Lloyd had become a well-known figure, even something of a hero, especially among young left-wingers – hence his election to the Executive.
So both Lloyd and Uncle Billy had been at last night’s committee meeting. They knew that Chamberlain had bowed to pressure from the Cabinet and sent the ultimatum to Hitler. Now they were waiting on tenterhooks to see what would happen.
As far as they knew, no response had yet been received from Hitler.
Lloyd recalled his mother’s friend Maud and her family in Berlin. Those two little children would be eighteen and nineteen now, he calculated. He wondered if they were sitting around a radio wondering whether they were going to war against England.
At ten o’clock, Lloyd’s half-sister, Millie, arrived. She was now nineteen, and married to her friend Naomi Avery’s brother Abe, a leather wholesaler. She earned good money as a salesgirl on commission in an expensive dress shop. She had ambitions to open her own shop, and Lloyd had no doubt that she would do it one day. Although it was not the career Bernie would have chosen for her, Lloyd could see how proud he was of her brains and ambition and smart appearance.
But today her poised self-assurance had collapsed. ‘It was awful when you were in Spain,’ she said tearfully to Lloyd. ‘And Dave and Lenny never did come back. Now it will be you and my Abie off somewhere, and us women waiting every day for news, wondering if you’re dead yet.’
Ethel put in: ‘And your cousin Keir. He’s eighteen now.’
Lloyd said to his mother: ‘Which regiment was my real father in?’
‘Oh, does it matter?’ She was never keen to talk about Lloyd’s father, perhaps out of consideration for Bernie.
But Lloyd wanted to know. ‘It matters to me,’ he said.
She threw a peeled potato into a pan of water with unnecessary vigour. ‘He was in the Welsh Rifles.’
‘The same as me! Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘The past is the past.’
There might be another reason for her caginess, Lloyd knew. She had probably been pregnant when she married. This did not bother Lloyd, but to her generation it was shameful. All the same, he persisted. ‘Was my father Welsh?’
‘Yes.’
‘From Aberowen?’
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’
She sighed. ‘His parents moved around – something to do with his father’s job – but I think they were from Swansea originally. Satisfied now?’
‘Yes.’
Lloyd’s Aunt Mildred came in from church, a stylish middle-aged woman, pretty except for protruding front teeth. She wore a fancy hat – she was a milliner with a small factory. Her two daughters by her first marriage, Enid and Lillian, both in their late twenties, were married with children of their own. Her elder son was the Dave who had died in Spain. Her younger son, Keir, followed her into the kitchen. Mildred insisted on taking her children to church, even though her husband, Billy, would have nothing to do with religion. ‘I had a lifetime’s worth of that when I was a child,’ he often said. ‘If I’m not saved, no one is.’
Lloyd looked around. This was his family: mother, stepfather, half-sister, uncle, aunt, cousin. He did not want to leave them and go away to die somewhere.
Lloyd looked at his watch, a stainless-steel model with a square face that Bernie had given him as a graduation present. It was eleven o’clock. On the radio, the fruity voice of newsreader Alvar Lidell said the Prime Minister was expected to make an announcement shortly. Then there was some solemn classical music.
‘Hush, now, everyone,’ said Ethel. ‘I’ll make you all a cup of tea after.’
The kitchen went quiet.
Alvar Lidell announced the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.
The appeaser of Fascism, Lloyd thought; the man who gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler; the man who had stubbornly refused to help the elected government of Spain even after it became indisputably obvious that the Germans and Italians were arming the rebels. Was he about to cave in yet again?
Lloyd noticed that his parents were holding hands, Ethel’s small fingers digging into Bernie’s palm.
He checked his watch again. It was a quarter past eleven.
Then they heard the Prime Minister say: ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Ten Downing Street.’
Chamberlain’s voice was reedy and over-precise. He sounded like a pedantic schoolmaster. What we need is a warrior, Lloyd thought.
‘This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that, unless the British government heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’
Lloyd found himself feeling impatient with Chamberlain’s verbiage. A state of war would exist between us : what a strange way to put it. Get on with it, he thought; get to the point. This is life and death.
Chamberlain’s voice deepened and became more statesmanlike. Perhaps he was no longer looking at the microphone, but instead seeing millions of his countrymen in their homes, sitting by their radio sets, waiting for his fateful words. ‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received.’
Lloyd heard his mother say: ‘Oh, God, spare us.’ He looked at her. Her face was grey.
Chamberlain uttered his next, dreadful words quite slowly: ‘. . . and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’
Ethel began to cry.
Part Two
A SEASON OF BLOOD
6
1940 (I)
Aberowen had changed. There were cars, trucks and buses on the streets. When Lloyd had come here as a child in the 1920s to visit his grandparents, a parked car had been a rarity that would draw a crowd.
But the town was still dominated by the twin towers of the pithead, with their majestically revolving wheels. There was nothing else: no factories, no office blocks, no industry other than coal. Almost every man in town worked down the pit. There were a few dozen exceptions: some shopkeepers, numerous clergymen of all denominations, a town clerk, a doctor. Whenever the demand for coal slumped, as it had in the thirties, and men were laid off, there was nothing else for them to do. That was why the Labour Party’s most passionate demand was help for the unemployed, so that such men would never again suffer the agony and humiliation of being unable to feed their families.
Lieutenant Lloyd Williams arrived by train from Cardiff on a Sunday in April 1940. Carrying a small suitcase, he walked up the hill to Tŷ Gwyn. He had spent eight months training new recruits – the same work he had done in Spain – and coaching the Welsh Rifles boxing team, but the army had at last realized that he spoke fluent German, transferred him to intelligence duties, and sent him on a training course.
Training was all the army had done so far. No British forces had yet fought the enemy in an engagement of any significance. Germany and the USSR had overrun Poland and divided it between them, and the Allied guarantee of Polish independence had proved worthless.
British people called it the Phoney War, and they were impatient for the real thing. Lloyd had no sentimental illusions about warfare – he had heard the piteous voices of dying men begging for water on the battlefields of Spain – but even so he was eager to get started on the final showdown with Fascism.
The army was expecting to
send more forces to France, assuming the Germans would invade. It had not happened, and they remained at the ready, but meanwhile, they did a lot of training.
Lloyd’s initiation into the mysteries of military intelligence was to take place in the stately home that had featured in his family’s destiny for so long. The wealthy and noble owners of many such palaces had loaned them to the armed forces, perhaps for fear that otherwise they might be confiscated permanently.
The army had certainly made Tŷ Gwyn look different. There were a dozen olive-drab vehicles parked on the lawn, and their tyres had chewed up the earl’s lush turf. The gracious entrance courtyard, with its curved granite steps, had become a supply dump, and giant cans of baked beans and cooking lard stood in teetering stacks where, formerly, bejewelled women and men in tailcoats had stepped out of their carriages. Lloyd grinned: he liked the levelling effect of war.
Lloyd entered the house. He was greeted by a podgy officer in a creased and stained uniform. ‘Here for the intelligence course, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir. My name is Lloyd Williams.’
‘I’m Major Lowther.’
Lloyd had heard of him. He was the Marquis of Lowther, known to his pals as Lowthie.
Lloyd looked around. The paintings on the walls had been shrouded with huge dust sheets. The ornate carved marble fireplaces had been boxed in with rough planking, leaving only a small space for a grate. The dark old furniture that his mother sometimes mentioned fondly had all disappeared, to be replaced by steel desks and cheap chairs. ‘My goodness, the place looks different,’ he said.
Lowther smiled. ‘You’ve been here before. Do you know the family?’
‘I was up at Cambridge with Boy Fitzherbert. I met the Viscountess there, too, although they weren’t married then. But I suppose they’ve moved out for the duration.’
‘Not entirely. A few rooms have been reserved for their private use. But they don’t bother us at all. So you came here as a guest?’
‘Goodness, no, I don’t know them well. No, I was shown around the place as a boy, one day when the family weren’t in residence. My mother worked here at one time.’
‘Really? What, looking after the earl’s library, or something?’
‘No, as a housemaid.’ As soon as the words were out of Lloyd’s mouth he knew he had made a mistake.
Lowther’s face changed to an expression of distaste. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘How very interesting.’
Lloyd knew he had instantly been pigeonholed as a proletarian upstart. He would now be treated as a second-class citizen throughout his time here. He should have kept quiet about his mother’s past: he knew how snobbish the army was.
Lowthie said: ‘Show the lieutenant to his room, sergeant. Attic floor.’
Lloyd had been assigned a room in the old servants’ quarters. He did not really mind. It was good enough for my mother, he thought.
As they walked up the back stairs, the sergeant told Lloyd he had no obligations until dinner in the mess. Lloyd asked whether any of the Fitzherberts happened to be in residence right now, but the man did not know.
It took Lloyd two minutes to unpack. He combed his hair, put on a clean uniform shirt, and went to visit his grandparents.
The house in Wellington Row seemed smaller and more drab than ever, though it now had hot water in the scullery and a flushing toilet in the outhouse. The decor had not altered within Lloyd’s memory: same rag rug on the floor, same faded paisley curtains, same hard oak chairs in the single ground-floor room that served as living room and kitchen.
His grandparents had changed, though. Both were about seventy now, he guessed, and looking frail. Granda had pains in his legs, and had reluctantly retired from his job with the miners’ union. Grandmam had a weak heart: Dr Mortimer had told her to put her feet up for a quarter of an hour after meals.
They were pleased to see Lloyd in his uniform. ‘Lieutenant, is it?’ said Grandmam. A class warrior all her life, she nevertheless could not conceal her pride that her grandson was an officer.
News travelled fast in Aberowen, and the fact that Dai Union’s grandson was visiting probably went halfway round the town before Lloyd had finished his first cup of Grandmam’s strong tea. So he was not really surprised when Tommy Griffiths dropped in.
‘I expect my Lenny would be a lieutenant, like you, if he’d come back from Spain,’ Tommy said.
‘I should think so,’ Lloyd said. He had never met an officer who had been a coal miner in civilian life, but anything might happen once the war got going properly. ‘He was the best sergeant in Spain, I can tell you that.’
‘You two went through a lot together.’
‘We went through hell,’ Lloyd said. ‘And we lost. But the Fascists won’t win this time.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Tommy, and emptied his mug of tea.
Lloyd went with his grandparents to the evening service at the Bethesda Chapel. Religion was not a big part of his life, and he certainly did not go along with Granda’s dogmatism. The universe was mysterious, Lloyd thought, and people might as well admit it. But it pleased his grandparents that he sat with them in chapel.
The extempore prayers were eloquent, knitting biblical phrases seamlessly into colloquial language. The sermon was a bit tedious, but the singing thrilled Lloyd. Welsh chapelgoers automatically sang in four-part harmony, and when they were in the mood they could raise the roof.
As he joined in, Lloyd felt this was the beating heart of Britain, here in this whitewashed chapel. The people around him were poorly dressed and ill-educated, and they lived lives of unending hard work, the men winning the coal underground, the women raising the next generation of miners. But they had strong backs and sharp minds, and all on their own they had created a culture that made life worth living. They gained hope from nonconformist Christianity and left-wing politics, they found joy in rugby football and male voice choirs, and they were bonded together by generosity in good times and solidarity in bad. This was what he would be fighting for, these people, this town. And if he had to give his life for them, it would be well spent.
Granda gave the closing prayer, standing up with his eyes shut, leaning on a walking stick. ‘You see among us, O Lord, your young servant Lloyd Williams, sitting by here in his uniform. We ask you, in your wisdom and grace, to spare his life in the conflict to come. Please, Lord, send him back home to us safe and whole. If it be your will, O Lord.’
The congregation gave a heartfelt amen, and Lloyd wiped away a tear.
He walked the old folk home as the sun went down behind the mountain and an evening gloom settled on the rows of grey houses. He refused the offer of supper and hurried back to Tŷ Gwyn, arriving in time for dinner in the mess.
They had braised beef, boiled potatoes and cabbage. It was no better or worse than most army food, and Lloyd tucked in, aware that it had been paid for by people such as his grandparents who were having bread-and-dripping for their supper. There was a bottle of whisky on the table, and Lloyd took some to be convivial. He studied his fellow trainees and tried to remember their names.
On his way up to bed he passed through the Sculpture Room, now empty of art and furnished with a blackboard and twelve cheap desks. There he saw Major Lowther talking to a woman. At a second glance he saw that the woman was Daisy Fitzherbert.
He was so surprised that he stopped. Lowther looked around with an irritated expression. He saw Lloyd and reluctantly said: ‘Lady Aberowen, I believe you know Lieutenant Williams.’
If she denies it, Lloyd thought, I shall remind her of the time she kissed me, long and hard, on a Mayfair street in the dark.
‘How nice to see you again, Mr Williams,’ she said, and put out her hand to shake.
Her skin was warm and soft to his touch. His heart beat faster.
Lowther said: ‘Williams tells me his mother worked at this house as a maid.’
‘I know,’ Daisy said. ‘He told me that at the Trinity Ball. He was reproving me for being a snob. I�
��m sorry to say that he was quite right.’
‘You’re generous, Lady Aberowen,’ said Lloyd, feeling embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what business I had to say such a thing to you.’ She seemed less brittle than he remembered: perhaps she had matured.
Daisy said to Lowther: ‘Mr Williams’s mother is a Member of Parliament now, though.’
Lowther was taken aback.
Lloyd said to Daisy: ‘And how is your Jewish friend Eva? I know she married Jimmy Murray.’
‘They have two children now.’
‘Did she get her parents out of Germany?’
‘How kind of you to remember – but no, sadly, the Rothmanns can’t get exit visas.’
‘I’m so sorry. It must be hell for her.’
‘It is.’
Lowther was visibly impatient with this talk of housemaids and Jews. ‘To get back to what I was saying, Lady Aberowen . . .’
Lloyd said: ‘I’ll bid you goodnight.’ He left the room and ran upstairs.
As he got ready for bed he found himself singing the last hymn from the service:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging
Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?
(ii)
Three days later Daisy was finishing writing to her half-brother, Greg. When war broke out he had sent her a sweetly anxious letter, and since then they had corresponded every month or so. He had told her about seeing his old flame, Jacky Jakes, on E street in Washington, and asked Daisy what would make a girl run away like that? Daisy had no idea. She said so, and wished him luck, then signed off.
She looked at the clock. It was an hour before the trainees’ dinner time, so lessons had ended and she had a good chance of catching Lloyd in his room.
She went up to the old servants’ quarters on the attic floor. The young officers were sitting or lying on their beds, reading or writing. She found Lloyd in a narrow room with an old cheval-glass, sitting by the window, studying an illustrated book. She said: ‘Reading something interesting?’
